My Favourite Aston.

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I was watching a repeat of an eposode of "Knots Landing" recently and one of the main characters was arriving home when he passed one of my all time favourite cars which was parked in their cul-de-sac. An Aston Martin V8. Although the car he passed, and then went back to look at, was the Volante version and so not my ideal car, I still thought that it looked very impressive. Introduced in 1967, it was initially sold as the DBS with Aston's 4 litre straight six engine until the 5.3 litre V8 was ready two years later when it became the DBS V8. It was this car that first held my attention in the TV series "The Persuaders" when it was driven by Lord Brett Sinclair, played by Roger Moore. As a teenaged boy I loved the episode, and opening sequence, where this suave, sophisticated man picked up 4 scantily clad female hitch-hikers in his gorgeous Aston, although I've since realised that the girl seated in the centre of the rear seat would have been rather uncomfortable due to it's highly sculpted two seater layout. And the car used in the series was a straight six modified to look like the V8 as the small, Newport Pagnall firm hadn't got any V8 models available at the time of filming. Even in it's lowest specification, this one and a half ton beauty could take it's passengers from a standstill to 60 MPH in under 9 seconds and go on speeds of around 140 MPH in complete comfort. Later, tuned Vantage models were marketed that would do the zero to sixty dash in less than 6 seconds and have a top speed in excess of 160 MPH. But parked at the side of the road or purring along the motorway, in Coupe guise or as a Volante, I think this was one of the best looking cars around.